


I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm

by Zigzagwanderer



Series: The Very Thought Of You [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Dirty Talk, Formalwear, New Year's Eve, Period-Typical Homophobia, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:48:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22158871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigzagwanderer/pseuds/Zigzagwanderer
Summary: Lord Hux is British aristocracy. Ren was his butler and long-time, on-off lover. After the death of his abusive father, Hux has finally bought them a flat in London, so that they can be together, even if their love has to be kept a secret.It might help if you've read the other fics in this odd little 'verse of mine. (Then again, it might not!!)Thank you if you read/kudo/comment, and let me know if you're interested in what happens in the coatroom.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Series: The Very Thought Of You [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623457
Comments: 16
Kudos: 36





	I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm

The staff at the gala won’t let Ren in.

The last time he was here in Mayfair he was a servant. Now he’s a guest. No wonder they’re confused.

He stands and sheds sleet over the Ambassador’s gilded hallway, while they scurry off to find Lord Hux. 

Ren brushes his hand against the front of his damp trousers. The thought of Hux coming when Ren calls is shamefully erotic. 

“Yes, yes.” Hux limps from the ballroom, waving off the apologies from the Embassy doormen. He is framed in one of the star-strung archways, untouched caipirinha in hand, irritable and lean as a thoroughbred.

He is _everything_ that Ren has wanted since the first day they met. 

“Of course he’s with me,” his lordship tells them all. 

Ren licks along his bottom lip; it is taut and aching from the cold. 

He’s been away for long enough. Ren needs to thaw out his ice and uncertainty in Hux. To press him down by the shoulders and have him grumble and whine for more, glowing with desire. 

They take Ren’s wet coat. He supresses a shudder, suddenly sweating in his new tuxedo, an animal smell behind the clean soap and starch. 

In the countryside he’s just motored through, the late December storm has spread and splayed itself wantonly across the furrowed fields. Here, in London, it rams itself uncompromisingly into the tight streets and squares, and the gutters run sluttish with its thick, white mess. 

Hux walks ahead of him, tapping out a rebuke with his walking stick. “You're abominably late. I bloody well _told_ you to leave your mother’s place before the blizzard got in.” It’s all hissing and brogue, Hux’s clipped cadences smoothed out by anger and frustration. “You bloody _idiot_.”

Ren's mother was committed to the asylum right after she and Ren came to England. Hux has always been matter-of-fact about it, and doesn’t usually make it sound as if Mrs Ren has some nice little dowager cottage tucked away in the Cotswolds. Maybe it sounds better that way to Hux now, in the company he seems keen for them to keep. 

“The weather broadcast said that it’d hold off ‘til Wednesday,” Ren replies, softly, blinking beneath the chandeliers, feeling the sharpness of elbows and the sharpness of diamonds and the sharpness of quick, inquiring glances all turning towards him. 

“I’ve been a farmer and an RAF Squadron Leader, Kylo. I daresay I know how to read a heavy sky better than some damned radio announcer.” 

The scent of champagne scorches the air, heady and bitter.

Hux stops by a fireplace and chaffs back at some of the beautiful Admiralty boys, gods of the air and the water at play. 

Ren has to watch, and hates hearing the shared language of it and doesn’t rightly know where to stand, now the miracle has happened, now that he and Hux share a bed, and in it, one another.

There’s a lot to be said for sticking to his usual place, a step behind the master. From there he can stare at the bracing tendons of Hux’s neck, and breathe in Hux’s cologne, aromatic as cedar-sawdust. 

But Hux takes Ren by the elbow and slides his own good leg forward, nudging Ren deliberately and slowly, forcing him into a new, untried orbit. By his side. 

“You could have ended up smashing up the Austin. Breaking that pretty neck of yours in a snow drift, for God’s sake. Then what would I have done?” 

_Same as I would’ve had to_ , Ren doesn’t say, _when you went off to become a fighter pilot, and pranged your plane in the sea and nearly died._

Same as I did, Ren doesn’t say, when you got _married_. 

“I was careful, Armitage.” Hux’s signet ring shines back at Ren, from his left hand. He fists his fingers, cramping from hours of solitary driving. “I just stopped by the Hall, on my way back. For that paperwork from your study. Those documents you were talking about. If you want to…to fight your…your ex-wife in court. You said you’d need those letters to prove she said she wanted nothing from you. In the divorce. I didn't want them to be thrown out or something.”

He makes himself say word after word after word. Only a handful of them hurt.

“Oh. Yes, well.” Hux scowls to himself and abruptly puts his cigarette out. “Thanks.” 

Hux’s eyes are very green, because of the grey underneath them. “It’s just that I was bloody worried, Ky. Have been worried.” His voice is tight, and low. “I thought Francesca might have made you fret so much about this…ridiculous situation you’d got yourself in with me, that you’d done the sensible thing and chucked me for good and all.”

A waiter point-blank offers Ren a drink. For a long moment he isn’t sure what to do. With either man that is looking at him so expectantly.

It’s all reversed, unnatural, even more so than Ren wearing the fine clothes that Hux has bought and paid for, but not so much as looked at. 

“Could you take this away?” Ren plucks the stupid cocktail out of Hux’s hand and puts it down with a soft click onto the waiter’s tray. “And bring Lord Hux a whiskey instead? With a little water. No ice.” 

And Hux flushes gloriously at that, eyes darkening. They are the colours of pleasure, the black and red of him, of wanting to be owned, and serviced. 

The room gets more crowded, they are pushed slightly apart. 

“I, well, should have asked how she is? Your mother, I mean.” Hux slides one hand into his pocket. It’s his way of not pinching at the pain of his never-mended hip, like some _bloody cripple_. 

“Well…Mom still thinks she’s a five-star General in an army from Outer Space. She’s kinda busy with that, I guess. Thought I was one of the bad guys. Her doctors asked me to leave.” 

It’s the way distress slips Ren back into his boyhood _American_ that makes Hux touch him, properly, finally, his grip a curl of heat around Ren’s wrist.

“Damn it to hell. I should have gone with you, Ky. Instead of seeing some blasted solicitor.” 

Girls in national costume with silver baskets are passing out whistles and toy horns, for when midnight arrives. Hux shakes his head at them, but kindly, and reluctantly lets Ren’s arm fall down by his side. He wrecks the Brylcreemed bronze of his hair and then smooths it back down. 

He flicks Ren a glance. “And I can’t begin to tell you how lovely you look in that get-up. So big and strong and so terribly lovely. But here I am selfishly wanting to take it off you too, Ky. Every bloody stitch of it.”

His knuckles are still swollen from where he punched a wall, after his ex-wife, Frannie to her friends, threatened them in their own home. 

Whatever it was she suspected was between them, the reality is much worse, and so much better. 

“I’ve been in a damned funk but that’s no excuse, my darling, and I’m sorry for it.” 

Lady Francesca is somewhere here, at the gala, right now, Ren suddenly realises. 

With her penniless, titled pals, and her brittle hatred of Hux. He’s been enduring the weight of her scorn and fury all evening, without Ren there to help him. 

“I’ve been so damned set on showing you all the razzle-dazzle that I forgot you have family…somewhere better to be. Not here, at this bloody dreadful shindig.”

Hux is beautiful, Ren thinks, in all of his damage and repair. Ren wants to accept it; the many apologies, the missteps and misunderstandings. He feels hollow enough to take it all. The only thing that can ever fill him is Hux.

It’s getting noisier. There’s a Bossa Nova trio in the corner, even though nobody’s listening to them as the well-heeled hysteria builds. A towering yellow cake with sapphire and emerald icing is being wheeled onto the corner stage, regardless of rationing. 

Ren puts his mouth to Hux’s ear, simply to be heard. 

“I want to be with _you_ , Armitage,” he says. “Always. I wish we were alone, so that I could fuck you.”

“Jesus Christ, Ky.” Hux goes very still, no longer fussing with his cufflinks nor trying to ease his leg injury nor sipping at his scotch. “Is that so?”

“Yes. I haven’t thought much about anything else. Kissing you. Rubbing you open. Pushing my cock into you. Wetting you with my come.”

They stare at each other. 

The staff jostle by as the edge of the year approaches, more attentive than ever as the pitch of the party rises further in ritual anticipation. They draw back the balcony curtains for the fireworks, but the sky is already flaked with platinum, and where lamplight strikes the snowstorm, a bright gold.

In another world, Ren would put his mouth to Hux now, to gentle his lips apart, to taste him after these dreary days of separation.

The band hushes.

“It’s been torture without you.” Hux speaks too loudly, really. “I want to close that creaky front door of ours and have you screw me ‘til I can’t bloody well walk straight.” 

The countdown is in Portuguese. 

But nothing else matters, apart from that Hux is smiling. It’s not without strain, but it’s a start. 

“Perhaps it’s time we went home, Kylo.” 

Disgrace is very different from despair, Ren thinks. 

“Can’t wait that long.” Ren takes Hux by the cuff and slides Hux’s scarred palm between where their bodies have been pressed close again. Ren’s erection moves against the silk lingerie he wears beneath the wool. “See what you do to me, even when we fight?”

Ren starts pulling Hux out into the corridor. He knows the layout of such fine houses. There’s always somewhere quiet to be found.

“Will you come with me to the coatroom, my lord?”


End file.
